Three Things to Know When Creating Your Company Culture

Hear the words “company culture,” and global corporations such a Yahoo! and Zappos may come to mind. However, companies of all sizes have created positive company cultures to help increase their revenues, enhance customer satisfaction and foster customer loyalty. Below are some insights based on the journey HOSTING embarked upon to create its own customer-focused service culture.

1) You Can’t Duplicate Another Company’s Culture

So don’t even try. While you can look to other organizations for inspiration, no other company can be “just like Zappos.” Rather than trying to duplicate another organization’s culture, establish what you want your company to be known for by your key audiences including customers, partners and employees. Maybe you want to be known for your fantastic customer service or unmatched product delivery. Next, work with your employees to determine ways in which to deliver on it.

2) Free Food and Smartphones Don’t Equal a Company Culture

One of the first things Marissa Mayer did as CEO of Yahoo! was take a page from the Google playbook and offer free food in the company’s URLs Cafe. She then provided every employee with their own smartphone. Generous – yes. But hardly the stuff that great company cultures are made of. Creating a company culture goes beyond providing free food and cool swag. A company’s culture can drive employee behavior so it’s important to elicit their feedback as to what skills and behaviors they value in their peers and colleagues. Then you should consider implementing the following steps to reinforce those values:

Teach It – incorporate a values review as part of your program.

Define It – document real life examples where your values shine.

Live It – make sure your decisions on any changes adhere to your values.

Measure It – include employee satisfaction along with customer satisfaction.

Reward It – Implement a peer reward system that rewards employees who live to the values.

3) The Impact of a Company’s Culture Must be Measured

Investing the time and energy into creating a company culture is just the start. You also need to develop tools to track how your culture impacts your organization’s overall performance goals. Set performance goals, track your progress, and examine how your culture has impacted sales growth, retention, and customer satisfaction. At HOSTING, we measure the impact of our culture using three different methods.

First, we benchmark the quality of service against other industry-leading companies by using the Net Promoter Score (NPS.) The NPS measures how likely our clients would recommend us to others. Every HOSTING employee is incentivized on our collective NPS score – not on upsell.

Finally, we leverage Customer Experience Journey Mapping (CXJM) to understand the customer experience from their point of view. A journey map is a visual representation of the people, processes, systems, and emotions a specific customer experiences during an interaction with a product or service. Leveraging those insights allows HOSTING to design experiences that build loyalty and advocacy while delivering positive value to our customers.